XML, the Extensible Markup Language, is a W3C-endorsed standard for document markup. It defines a generic syntax used to mark up data with simple and complex human-readable tags. It provides a self-describing standard format for computer documents. This format is flexible enough to be customized for domains as diverse as web sites, electronic data interchange, vector graphics, genealogy, real estate listings, object serialization, remote procedure calls, voice mail systems, etc.
XML is one of the most important developments in document syntax in the history of cross-platform computing. In the last few years, XML has been adopted in fields as diverse as law, aeronautics, finance, insurance, robotics, multimedia, hospitality, travel, art, construction, telecommunications, software design, agriculture, physics, journalism, theology, retail, and medieval literature. XML has become the syntax of choice for newly designed document formats across almost all computer applications. For example, XML is used on Linux, Windows, Macintosh, and many other computer platforms. Mainframes on Wall Street trade stocks with one another by exchanging XML documents. Children playing games on their home PCs save their documents in XML. Sports fans receive real-time game scores on their cell phones in XML. In short, XML is a robust, reliable, and flexible document syntax.
One prevailing problem with XML is that parsing of the XML document by the recipient computing device generates unnecessary overhead, and thus inserts time delays in the process. This is especially true when parsing certain types of data. The piece-by-piece process of dividing the document into individual elements, attributes, and other pieces, also known as “tokenization”, can consume a considerable amount of time. This is particularly true where the original data is stored as text, but could be better represented as a binary number, such as might be the case for float numbers or the like. Also, as both high speed wired and wireless systems proliferate, the use of streaming data in connection therewith also has increased, and thus there is a concomitant need for an XML format that can be quickly parsed as data is received. Furthermore, some computing systems are known to output or store a particular type of data. When data in such systems is transmitted as an XML document, the pre-knowledge concerning the particular type of data is not currently exploited since the XML document is formed in exactly the same way regardless.
It would thus be advantageous to provide binary formatted XML data that effectively pre-tokenizes XML documents/data, thereby effectively reducing parsing time for a receiving application or program. It would be further advantageous to provide binary formatted XML data that effectively represents data natively formatted in binary XML. It would be desirable to reduce the overall size of an XML document as a result of an XML binary format. It would be further desirable, in connection with particular types of computing systems, to provide a tailored approach when applying binary formatting to the XML document. It would be further advantageous in the context of applications generating XML from a non-XML based data source due to the avoided cost of text transformations.